bobk wrote:I think our forums would be much healthier if all forum operators would maintain their own public "banned" list. That would not only let people know what's going on, but it would give the operator a little more incentive to carefully consider the decision to ban someone. Right now it's too easy for a forum operator to get annoyed and just make a person disappear. This list is intended to make that decision a little more difficult.

The "banned" list could directly follow the forum rules list. Then supply a link that would show the incident where the specific forum rule was broken that justified the banning.

brianscharp wrote:The "banned" list could directly follow the forum rules list. Then supply a link that would show the incident where the specific forum rule was broken that justified the banning.

I think that's an excellent suggestion. The two should be tied together so that people can better understand both the rules and the list of banned people. I'm not a lawyer, but I think there are two "kinds" of laws: laws made by the legislature, and "case law" which is really the court's determination/interpretation of the legislature's laws. By linking the two, we can give people a better sense of what we're doing and why.

brianscharp wrote: . . . Then supply a link that would show the incident where the specific forum rule was broken that justified the banning.

At times there simply is no justification, or legitimate "rule breaking" that took place. User name S C Wise was banned from the Oz Report Forum for reporting another user who HAD violated the site's rules. The violator (Billie Floyd) is still an active posting member - and the user who he attacked and defamed is banned. This seems that makes sense to Davis Straub.

choppergirl wrote:I got banned from EAA Forums for some bizarre, unknown, unexplained reason for making this post, which was like my second post on the site, and seemed to me to be a pretty basic, legitimate question:http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?735 ... ps-and-FAA

Yep, that's the post I made.. probably my second... and all i asked, was how to ask EAA (which is supposedly a-political) to stop inviting cops carrying guns to their meetings to tell me about rules I don't care to hear. I've seen more than enough Youtube videos of cops shooting people, or shooting themselves. If I come to an aviation meeting, I want to talk about building airplanes, flying airplanes, schmooze with other birds of a feather, etc. I'm not there to listen to some one dictate to me what I can and can not do, who is packing heat. Do i need to pack my own heat and bring weapons to an EAA meeting? Is that the way it's going to be? I should hope not. Simply because I disagree with what you're ordering me to do. If so, I'd rather not participate, and stay home and work on my airplane alone I have no problem with gun ownership, I'll defend your right to own whatever you want as long as it's not another human being, but I do have a problem with numbskulls near me with guns, and a *real* problem with numbskulls near me with guns telling me what to do because of their brainwashed statist philosophy. I'd rather not be in the same vicinity as them and their presence turns an EAA meeting into a toxic environment.

The ironic thing is, I'm now great friends with my local EAA chapter's Vice President; we text via SMS for many months now, and if I want to tell him my thoughts about the local chapter, I just blurt it out to him. He just got his very first Cessna 150 and 172 and is starting his own flight training school, and when I told him I had been banned from the EAA Forums, his response was "Fxxx the forums! Flying is where it's at" and shot me pictures of him in his cockpits.

My point is not whether you agree with my philosophy, but whether a newbie should be banned simply for asking a question? Or should anybody, for that matter, be banned, for asking a question. My answer is a self evident and emphatic: no.

I've been kicking about the idea of cranking up my own aviation forum... because I've been banned myself for utter nonsense ... I have the hacking technical wizardy, I've done it before (kind of involved going through all the settings and fixing unix permisions when things break out of the box)... and I already have a domain name...

But most importantly, I'm a pretty hard core defender of free speech, even when it offends me or is ripping on me. About the only thing I can really see as far as deleting posts is from obvious spam robots, and just the absolute most virulent ad hominem attacks that are really not going anywhere... otherwise, I'm all for arguing... this or that. If it's hashing something out. Anybody can put in their 2 cents. That's the point of a forum. A watering hole or water cooler where you can share what you're doing, or say what's on your mind, or get your own comment into an ongoing discussion that remains open to anybody jumping in at any time..

As for banning... hmmm... it would be pretty rare, if ever... you'd have to be really, always trying to monkey wrench things up for me or putting the technical operation of the site at risk (like launch a scriptkiddie script to post a thousand nonsense posts) to finally push the button to do it... otherwise there would be a lot of resistance to ban people... not like this ban happy craze going on. I know from my days running game servers, I was pretty deadset against banning anybody, even some real jerkwads. Most everyone that comes to aviation forums are pretty much birds of a feather and are there to contribute. Whether it be a half assed opinion or otherwise, it's still a contribution.

Webspace and bandwidth I have, but it's kind of a big undertaking and commitment of time to keep a forum technically running forever... software upgrades to the entire forum package can be a PITA. You kind of end up being a benevolent dictator, but if you're a good dictator, you mostly run it hands off, only scooching things back as politely as you can when things go way off the rails. People get easily butthurt and ticked off and just leave. You don't want that, you want them creating the content that makes the site and has everyone else coming back for the latest post...

New Ideas and controversial ideas are often unpopular... or go against the grain and those posters are in the minority. Just because you have a controversial opinion, doesn't mean you should be squashed of speaking it out. If it has merit, and passes muster, it will either fly or fall on that. If you believe in it, say it, it doesn't matter if you're a minority of one. You may just be right. A thousand billion people could believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, but if you say no, it comes from chocolate added to milk.. you're certainly being disruptive and controversial and difficult... but you're also being... right.

~

Does the net need at least one new, broad aviation forum and watering hole, with subsections for the different little enclaves? Or is there enough already, or two many?

I think your philosophy of forum moderation fits pretty well with what we're doing here.

You mentioned starting your own forum, and I think that's a great idea. But if you'd like to wade into it gently, feel free to start a topic here to see how it goes. If you start a topic in the "Blog Forum" you can set your own rules and we'll enforce them for you. You post the rules in the first post of your topic and just let us know how to handle any violations. If your blog topics start to gain some momentum, we can even add your own subforum like the "Rick Masters:Dangerous Thoughts" subforum at the top of the Blog Forum (you should read Rick's blog, by the way, it's riveting aviation - first hand). And if you find you've outgrown your US Hawks blog, we can send you the database files so you can easily rehost it somewhere else.

By the way, thanks for the link to your web site. I had thought the "chopper" was a reference to motorcycles and not helicopters. It looks like it's both!!

On Feb 22, 2019 Hawk891 was completely banned by Bob Kuczewski and the US Hawks Advisory Board, but as of Mar 11, 2019 the “Cover Page” of Banned of Brothers has not been updated to reflect the complete banning of Hawk891 from the US Hawks.

Here's a small lesson for you - The Banned of Brothers topic is partly based on the movie with a similar name. In that movie a group of US soldiers become "brothers" while fighting against their German enemies during World War II.

Do you understand that concept?

So, here on the US Hawks you bring up a short term member who could be much more closely imagined as "an enemy combatant" as he/she could ever be imagined as a Brother fighting on the same side. So, in your above post you are saying that we should invite an "enemy combatant" (someone who intentionally Flamed the US Hawks' front page) into the Brotherhood?

Does that really make sense to you? Does it make sense to anyone who's read my above text?

wingspan33 wrote:So, here on the US Hawks you bring up a short term member who could be much more closely imagined as "an enemy combatant" as he/she could ever be imagined as a Brother ...

I agree with Scott's reasoning here. But a more official reason is that I firmly believe "hawk891" was a sock puppet for someone else. I won't accuse anyone, but if the sock fits ... wear it.

Also, the U.S. Hawks has been banning spammers since this forum started. We do not place those names on the "Banned of Brothers" for a number of reasons. First, they are generally not real people. Second, it would flood the list and make it useless. And third, it would diminish the value of seeing who has actually been banned from all these forums.

If "hawk891" wants to earn a place on the "Banned of Brothers", then he (or she or ...) can contact the board members directly and convnice us that they are a real person distinct from the other members of the forum.